2013 Topps Rafael Dolis

As I've done previously, I'm taking a closer look at the 2013 Topps Cubs team set card by card.

As the title says, today's topic is Rafael Dolis, card #280.

First reaction (aside from why does Rafael Dolis have a Series 1 card?) is that it is a nice bold card. The blue jersey, green grass, grey pants and brown dirt all come together very nicely.

On second glance, I noticed the cropping around both hands is just a hair too tight. Plenty of leg room at the bottom to scoot it down a smidge. His feet are already cropped out so what's a couple pixels more? Same with the sides. The Topps logo is smartly in the upper right corner so shouldn't be a problem to move it over too. Even if his torso is not prefectly centered on the card. Lesser of two OCD's, I guess.

The pose is pretty solid too. No goofy, over-exerted facial expression for which his kids would make fun of him down the line when he's retired and reminiscing.

Photo by Justin k. Aller, courtesy of Getty Images

As I suspected, the original photo, taken by photographer Justin K. Aller, leaves plenty of space for a better cropping. It does look like Topps also lightened the photo a little to allow us to see his face better. Pretty solid job all the way around on this photo and card.

So the card looks good, but how did the Cubs fare that day?According to the caption on Getty Images, the photo was taken during a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates on May 27, 2012. Pulling up the boxscore on Baseball-Reference shows the Cubs fell to the Pirates 10-4 that day.

Ok, well how did our subject Rafael Dolis do? Not much better. Dolis entered the game with no outs in the 6th inning after starter Matt Garza gave up a walk and a home run. Dolis proceeded to walk his two batters before being pulled for Michael Bowden. The two runners both eventually scored leaving Dolis with an unfortunate line in the daily boxscore. So the photo above was captured during one of the nine pitches thrown by Dolis that day.

This card is definitely purtier on the outside than it is on the inside.

The Career Chase featured on the back of the card is Jesse Orosco's all-time games pitched record of 1,252. With only 35 games down, Dolis has a loooooong way to go.

Teammate Shawn Camp tied for the Major League lead in games played for pitchers last year with 80. So even at that league leader rate, it would still take almost 16 seasons to overtake Orosco.